And now we've made it real easy: noon Eastern every Tuesday is #AfghanistanHour. Any member of Congress or other politician who wants to step up to the plate and engage with the voters about Afghanistan, that's the time to be present and accounted for!

Below are the most current Twitter addresses for members of Congress from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

The vast majority of Americans are furious about the economic pain they are confronting, and the continued waste of trillions of dollars on the military and war.

As with the question of troop withdrawals, it's time to stop asking "if" and get down to debating "how much." Should we cut the military budget $50 billion/year? $100 billion? $200 billion? More? The sooner we start talking specifics, the sooner our government can start following our instructions.

A valuable outcome of #AfghanistanTuesday would be to separate the current members of Congress who are hearing their constituents on Afghanistan, and taking action, from those who are on autopilot, or #AWOL.

2012 is an election year and we should get representatives who follow our direction on ending wars and cutting military spending.

Many/most Americans feel squeamish when they hear the term "war crimes." However, as citizens we don't have the luxury of turning a blind eye to the crimes of our leaders: our leaders' crimes become our crimes.

A good place to start is with an authoritative review of U.S. war crimes over the past decade. Michael Haas' website is an excellent resource.

Again, we need to move the discussion beyond "if" to "when and where" U.S. war crimes will be prosecuted.

And of course, there's no limit to what people can tweet about on #AfghanistanTuesday! Some other recent examples include:

#AfghanistanTuesday Refuse to go to work on that day. Call in sick day. All people. Country will stop functioning as long as wars continue.

#Afghanistantuesday War is business. Find out who is making the money and target them or their partners through the media and boycott

"War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus."-Antoine De Saint #AfghanistanTuesday #tyranny #psychopathic

There's already been tremendous participation in #AfghanistanTuesday on Twitter. But we're just getting started! Week by week, we're looking for a growing tsunami of activity to show that Americans mean business about getting out of Afghanistan. What's important is that EVERYBODY start participating!

So now it's up to you. What will you be tweeting about on #AfghanistanTuesday?

Tuesdayistas are people who (a) take time each week to participate in a
national (and now global) conversation about ending the war in
Afghanistan; AND (b) help spread the word by reaching out to others (who
will reach out to others (who will reach out to others .... to do the
same!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

It's time to move beyond generalities and to talk logistics. We need to get out of Afghanistan, and do it at the pace of at least a brigade a month.

A brigade is about 5,000 troops, and a brigade a month is the pace at which we pulled combat troops out of Iraq. With about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, we can get nearly all of them out by the end of 2012 if we start now and withdraw a brigade a month.

In my opinion, we need to shift gears from talking in the abstract -- e.g. "We should be out of Afghanistan!" -- to talking about the specifics of how that's happening. We should talk about it expertly and conscientiously and relentlessly.

Moreover, we should talk about it with specific people - starting with the politicians who hope to be (re)elected in 2012. "A brigade a month" should be our non-negotiable minimum requirement. Politicians that want to derive advantage from their incumbency should start making it happen now. Politicians who can't meet this standard should find other employment, because we are going to work to get others elected who can make it happen.

This is a picture of what it looks like when we are troops are coming home: